GOSSIP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 3906, 23 October 1880, Page 4

GOSSIP.

Mrs Osborne, the lady preacher in Madras, is said to be one of the best speakers one has ever heard in that city.

A later hat than the " beef-eater " is the " bull-fighter's " hat. The brim is rolled up around the pyramidal crown, and the only trimming are two little clusters of raveled Bilk placed on the left sido.

An incidental of London evening parties is a coffee-cart for the supply of hot; coffeo, meut pies, &c, to tho servants who attend their masters and mistresses. The cart is sent to any house where ordered at a charge of five shillings a night.

Lawn tennis aprons are made with coloured borders eighteen inches deep and embroidered with sprays of flowers. The pocket and bib are similarly embroidered.

Large Spanish combs, broad and high, are being introduced. These combs seem to bo the avnnt couriers in tho fashion of wearing mantillas like the Spanish ladies. All underclothing is more fashionablo trimmed with lace and fine tucking this summer than with embroidery. White underskirts are made very short, gored and

trimmed round the bottom with three rows of fluting edged with narrow locs. Thero is a fus'iion in ages as well as everything else. In London drawing-rooms, sweet seventeen, with its insipidity, is wholly out of fashion, tho regulation age most in vogue being from twenty-four to thirty. This is in keeping with tho remark of an American writer that those who wish to havo really brilliant entertainments rnuat excludo very young people. About the date when "The Merchant of Venice " may be suspected to have exhibited his gaberdine on the Rialto, there actually existed great female lawyers in the neighbouring city of Bologna. Prof. Caderiii, who held tho Chair of Jurisprudence in that university in 1360, and Prof. Novella, who occupied it in 1366, were not only celebrated for thei"* legal loro and skill, but, if we may trust their portraits, exceedingly beautiful women, with noble Greek profiles. If women hereafter should again obtain entranco into the legal profession, it is not at nil improbable that wo may see something more of the keenness of feminine wits engaged in disentangling tho knots of the law. Two ladies in Ireland have just been conducting their own most intricate case in a manner which excited the surprise of the Master of the Rolls, who oven observed that he was "astonished that tho ladies had been able to put their case on paper so intelligently and clearly without legal advice." Mrs Nicoll, of the China Inland Mission (the Academy sajfr), has recently gone to Chungking, in Western China, being the first English woman who has entered the province of Szechuen. Miss Wilson and Miss Faussett, of the same mission, have also lately started from Wuchang, in Central China, on a boat journey of one thousand miles up the river Han on their way to Hanchung, in the remote province of Shensi, in the north-west. Paris actresses wear a little gold or silver pig on their watch chains. This oddity is looked upon as a talismanic counter- charm, which brings good luck to the wearer. It is an old Roman knick-knack, and was worn in worship of the goddess Fortune twenty centuries ago by the Italian people. They mado offerings to her of fat pigs, and gold and silver rings were made to represent them by votaries at her shrine.

The Chinese skill in dwarfing plants is well known. The Chinese ladies wear in their bosoms little dwarf fir-trees, which, by a carefully adjusted system of starvation, have been reduced to the size of button-bole flowers. These remain fresh and evergreen in their dwarf state for a number of yeans, just aB firtrees in mountains are evergreen, and thus are excellent symbols of perpetuity of love, to express which they are used by the ladies of the highest rank in the Celestial Empire. The full baptismal name of the recently betrothed princess, who may one day be Empress of Germany, is Augusta Victoria Frederica Louise Feodora Jennj. The last name is so unusual among princesses that many will be curious to know how she came by it. But that little secret seems not yet to have been divulged to the public. She is a lady of great personal attractions, and is in her twenty-second year — about the Bame age as Prince William.